My house is mostly vinyl siding with very little exposed wood. This is because I hate painting. My porch has spindle rails and turned vertical posts. They are all made from treated lumber that was installed and exposed for about 5 years before painting. When we painted them last year we found a number of bee holes bored into the posts that we filled with bug spray then wood filler before painting. We though that would be the end of it.

Not so. This year so far we have found almost a dozen new holes bored and piles of sawdust on the deck on 4 of the 11 vertical posts. I keep spraying to kill the bees when we find new holes. Is there anything we can add to the paint to deter them from boring?

Naw, I'll bet he's right. Carpenter bees are voracious little buggers that will keep coming back to the same place over and over again. This spring was bad around here for them. They were so thick out in the barn that it was like big flies around a pig sty.

I know of nothing that will deter them. It sounds like you are doing about all that can be done and that is killing the adults with an insecticide and putting poison in the holes. Leaving the holes open awhile might draw more bees into a poisoned hole, I don't know.

The mud daubers patch up the holes here about as fast as the carpenter bees make them. Those two species make some mighty interesting engineers. Both are as anal as can be about the perfection of their work.

I have the same problem under the lean-too on my shop. Cedar two by's. I wait and watch em go in the hole then WD40 or Wasp and hornet the hole. After a minute or so, they usually back out and drop to the ground. You could use a mix of 50 % water and liquid dish washing soap and shoot the this in the hole with a straight stream to flood it. Bees and wasp breath through their abdomen. Once the abdomen is coated, they can't breath, they expire.

I used to have that problem in my old house. I would spray a dose of Diazinon into the bee "hole" and then fill the hole with a good quality silicone caulk. Then spray regularly with a dose of Diazinon. Follow the label. That slowed them down quite a bit.

Logged

Built my own band mill with the help of Forestry Forum. Lucas 618 with 50" slabberWoodmizerLT-40 Super HydraulicDeere 5065E mfwd w/553 loader

The reason a lot of people do not recognize opportunity is because it usually goes around wearing overalls looking like hard work. --Tom A. Edison

I've squirted diesel fuel in some holes that I found in my window casing...I used the diesel fuel as the solvent in my stain when I put on the siding. When I found one starting a hole on the underside of a window sill, I just sprayed some ant & roach killer along the bottom of the sill, and they left it alone.

I also have a stack of white pine behind the house (left over from the siding job), so that may be working at bait to keep then out of the house

I've been using PB blaster both in the hole and while in flight. Works pretty well.I'd sure like to find something that keeps them away though.

My friend that built the log cabin is getting ate up with them.

Logged

Kubota L-4200, Ford 8N, S-10 4WD Beater truck, Chainsaw, Bush Hog, couple ATV's and 141 acres of trees I'm not sure what to do with but I sure do have fun and enjoy being in the woods!The First 50 years of childhood is always the hardest.

tom mentioned mud daubers. they will daub up any hole they find. i have found air tools and hoses that would not work. found they had daubed up the air inlet. a few days ago i found a big bunch of dried mud on top of the sun visor of a car that i had not driven for a while. they had apparently raised a big family in that one.

I had a similar problem with Carpenter Bees for a couple of years. I first used wasp & hornet spray to kill them and then a log & siding sealant to plug any entry holes. Then I did a complete cleaning of the wood with a mixture of bleach, water, and soap. I followed this by a good power washing and when everything was dry I applied a deep penetrating, oil based wood preservative stain that was toxic to flying pests from a log home supplier. So far it has been three years and no carpenter bees.

The bees are bad enough, but wait till the woodpeckers find them. They sure make a mess of things. I don't know which is worse. I've seen them here in the spring, bore into a new piece of pressure-treated.

The bees are bad enough, but wait till the woodpeckers find them. They sure make a mess of things. I don't know which is worse. I've seen them here in the spring, bore into a new piece of pressure-treated.